TGS: Microsoft on its Vision for Xbox One...

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...And why that vision won't be reality at launch.

By Cam Shea

During an Xbox One platform demo at Tokyo Game Show yesterday, Albert Penello, Microsoft's Sr. Director of Product Management and Planning, was extremely candid about the difficulties of launching a new console in 2013.

When I asked how Microsoft can sell gamers a particular vision of its new system that in many cases won't reflect the reality of what's delivered – i.e. some markets won't have voice recognition at launch, a heap of countries won't have full TV functionality, there will be differences in other services (apps etc) at launch, he had this to say.

“I think even in the U.S., there's going to be a lot of stuff that was on 360 that isn't going to be on Xbox One for a while. Y'know, it's an interesting dynamic that you find yourself in with console launches, but particularly when you're coming from a super mature platform... in the old days of console transitions, the expectation of what would be moving to the next console was basically isolated to games. And if you think about all the stuff we've done with Xbox 360 and how much it's different in the last ten years, you basically have ten years of innovation, ten years of experiences, and then, trying to take that and build an entirely new platform, with new hardware and a new software architecture.

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There's a lot of things that we'll talk about in our vision for the product that aren't going to be there at launch

“I mean, I totally understand people's frustrations, and it's hard to give an answer beyond the fact that, from my seat, it's a console transition and this is part and parcel. There's a lot of things that we'll talk about in our vision for the product that aren't going to be there at launch.

“TV, if you want to continue, would be another criticism. We talk a lot about TV and that's only going to work basically in Japan and the U.S. at launch where you have HDMI-in scenarios, so you'll say 'hey, what if I have a terrestrial over the air?' We won't have a solution for that right away, but we still sell it as part of the vision. So it's honest criticism and you'd love to have the new launch be everything that you had before and more, but unfortunately it's an untenable [proposition].”

Penello went on to detail some of the challenges Microsoft faces in delivering its TV functionality on Xbox One. “Right now the TV solution is an HDMI-in solution,” he told me. “The interesting thing about the challenge with television is that, when you launch a console, it's largely a global console. We've actually made Xbox more global by being region free. One console. All you need is a power supply. There's no standards or anything like that.

“If you look at TV standards around the world - I'll just use the U.S. because I'm most familiar with it - you have set top boxes with HDMI, you have satellite, you've got over the air, then you have all the regional providers that have their own – some use cable cards, some don't, the cable cards are different, and then you start going into digital terrestrial broadcasts – what the UK does with their set top boxes. And so for us, like voice, TV is going to be one of those things that's like a tree – we've just got to chop it down.

“So the basic experience of HDMI-in will be available for anybody that has TV with HDMI-in. I actually think it's an under-appreciated feature. Today, if I want to go between my console and my set top box I still have to pick up another remote and control it... TV is going to be an interesting challenge for us, as we really have to go through each region, each provider, each set of I.P. and build a solution that works.”

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Even with the number of cord cutters, live television viewing around the world surpasses cord cutters by a factor of a hundred to one, a thousand to one

I then asked whether it's actually worth the effort, given that streaming and on-demand is clearly the future, and that I personally haven't watched any form of free-to-air or cable TV for close to a decade. Penello believes that I'm on one side of a generational divide, and that “even with the number of cord cutters, live television viewing around the world surpasses cord cutters by a factor of a hundred to one, a thousand to one, so yes, it's still going to be super important for real, average people.”

But what about the fact that Xbox One won't have the full TV functionality at launch? Penello sees it as a demographic question. “It's not going to be us – it's not the early adopters that this is a problem [for] - which is why we're not prioritising solving it right off the bat, because the price of the consoles will have to come down like they do in every generation, the market will expand, we'll eventually catch up to the people who are probably laggards in TV, and by that time we'll have a more robust story than we have at launch.” So in summary – the TV stuff's not really for you, but by the time your mum and dad want a machine it'll totally work.

The other topic we touched on was voice recognition - specifically the fact that it won't be available at launch in a number of territories. Surely, I comment, with all the experience the company has had with the first iteration of Kinect, it should be able to deliver this at launch? It's complicated, he says. “In English we have two totally different models, even just between the U.K. [and the U.S.] and that's not just words because in each of those models you need to have accents.”

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The Kinect sensor is completely different… so we don't get to take any of what we did before

But what about the algorithms for analysing voice from the original Kinect? “It's totally different,” Penello states. “The Kinect sensor is completely different from the other one and because you're using far field, we have to start all over with the new sensor and the new models. So we don't get to take any of what we did before. And none of the stuff we've launched on phone helps us either.”

The good news for Australian gamers is that – contrary to previous official statements by Microsoft – it looks like Australia will have voice recognition at launch after all. Penello assured me that Australia was on the list for launch (but not New Zealand – sorry guys). When asked for 100% confirmation he looked it up on his phone and read from the screen: “Global voice commands in ten countries: U.S., Great Britain, Canadian English, French Canadian, French French, German, Australian English, Spain Spanish, Mexico Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.” Fingers crossed that's actually the case and not simply another example of mixed messaging out of the Xbox camp.

Microsoft clearly has a mountain to climb to deliver on its promises for Kinect, TV and other services for Xbox One around the world. On one hand, it's great to see such ambition, and even if it's lacking some of the aspects promised by Microsoft's marketing machine, Xbox One will have a suite of fantastic functionality out of the gate. On the other, Xbox One is going to have a heavily fragmented global feature set for years to come, which could potentially harm it in the eyes of consumers who buy into Microsoft's vision.